Paint? Color?

paint brush is standard for a machine.
it's easy to paint around the machined surfaces, and if you get paint on it you just wipe it off with mineral spirits.
That being said, I paint most of my machines with a brush, but some areas, I spray, because I can, I am an excellent sprayer..
But it's not for all of the machine, it's too much to mask. A brush works fine.

As far as color... do whatever you like, it's yours. My machine was ugly blue.. It's now gray.. when I say ugly blue.. here's what I mean.
https://imgur.com/a/6OT4a
it's now SB gray/green using Sherwin Williams mix.. if I had to do it again, it would be rustoleum gray, it seems to do a better job of fighting the oil and is inexpensive.
 
I would vote for grey, but for more practical reasons. Of the machine tools in the shop the vast majority are Machinery grey. That includes the Bridgeport milling machine, Seneca Falls lathe, Sheldon lathe, Racine power hacksaw, US Machine Tools horizontal mill, Delta Rockwell belt/disk sander, Jet drill press Rockford drill press, Delta jointer, Craftsman table saw, Delta scroll saw, and the Dewalt radial arm saw. The paint will show dirt and swarf but is all but impervious to coolants and oils. It's almost non Reflectent so there's no glare when trying to do precision work.

Machines with different shades of green include the Sanford surface grinder AMMCO shaper, and the Startrite horizontal bandsaw. The Black Diamond drill grinder is blue as are parts of the Baileigh cold saw. The Greenerd arbor press is cream colored, and the only yellow tool in the bunch is the Rockwell vertical bandsaw
 
My brother painted a lot of the stuff in his shop "Hemi Orange." He did that because it was his favorite color, and... he could. My only complaint with his color choice was the orange showed dirt pretty quickly.

I have a large drum sander in my shop (for wood) that I built 30+ years ago. My color choice at the time was blue. I still like it.

I would say if you like Ford blue, paint it! There are a lot of worse colors I can think of.
 
Turquoise anyone?

fr_3775.jpg

Little bit green, little bit blue. Certainly not a "mainstream" color.

Looks nice and I has kind of a "50's feel" to it (the lathe is from the 50's after all). I have to live with it a bit before I can decide if I actually like it or if its just a fad thing and if I want to paint the whole lathe that color.
 
7milesup said:
I like it!
Click to expand...
I'm actually considering doing some striping on it as well.

I'd like to keep it somewhat 50's looking, so I might do something along the lines of the old singer sewing machines:

nick-fewings-6G6SxCpmGWQ-unsplash-scaled.jpg


Now, the old singers are a little over the top with the scrolling and gilding. But it gives me a general pattern/theme/starting point that I can adapt to look decent on the lathe.

Jury is still out, I may just paint it turquoise, polish the bits I that can and call it a day....
 
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